Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Greed and time

Lately, the word, greed, has been thrown around a lot regarding the financial crisis. I find lessons in it to apply to my running, and the greed of modern man is not just simply wanting something, but wanting something all at once. The urge to make a lot of money on subprime morgages to immediately boost housing sales vs. the traditional patient and prudent model of only granting mortgages to the truly qualified canidates resulted in the crisis we have today. The urge to make money isn't greed, until it's through destructive means.

Similarly, my running habbits can suffer from greed too. If I run too much when it's beautiful or I am chasing a goal that I'm not prepared for, I get injured or worn down. That's not to say I can't get to the next level of maintaining higher mileages, just that asking for it right now in my career isn't going to be without risk of injury. That line between agressively chasing success and greed can get blurred sometimes, but the litmus test for it is always answered by the body's response.

One could also ask, does greed always have a black death connotation? Not necessarily; anger can be used positively to spur on someone to motivate them through a tough spot, yet anger genereally has a negative connotation. I think to achieve the overly ambitious goals I set out, some greed must be present to dare to attempt to achieve them. The line where it becomes severely negative though must always be observed to stay efficiently centered on developing ability.

I look at it as if when I'm mentally exhausted from training, but in reality my body physically has some more to give, the idea of greed can push it back up to the true physical limit, and negate the mental weakness for the moment. However, once I push myself to injury, I loose time, I loose fitness, and I disrupt growth clearly indicating excessive greed. Would I do these things if I knew before hand that it was destructive greed? No, but therein lies the trouble of training and coaching: a divine knowledge of the human body and it's limits that can't be perfected.

This mystery is what allows youth to excell and break records, and then to have their records broken. If there's a take away from this blog, it's that the best runners come closest to perfecting the balance of greed and ability. Each run should be treated as special, because every run is a chance to bring out the best in us, or display excessive greed.

Sunday on the Los Pinos climb: -The top of the consistent climb

-At halfway up the climb, the destination is the farthest peak you can see

-Top of the last bump shows more hidden dips

-Close up of another saddle and steep climb

Weekly total:45 miles, 13,100 ft-Scaled back a bit, good recovery for Los Pinos, starting to feel fresh agan. I did a little 15%, 4mi test on monday, and it looks like I'm ready for Saturday.